Fly Explores: Alaska Day

Hey Tribe,

Happy Alaska Day! State employees get the day off work – the rest of us have to soldier on as if it were any other Thursday.

In honor of the day, I thought I’d share some of my favorite Alaskan photos that I’ve captured in recent years. I say recent, because, like many folks, I have tons more pictures stored electronically somewhere on some misplaced external hard drive that I hope to find one of these days…

Dirt biking out to the Knik glacier

You might be wondering, what is Alaska Day? We celebrate the date that Alaska was formally controlled by the United States back in 1867; as I mentioned, State employees get a paid holiday, school in Sitka closes early, and there are parades. No, Sitka isn’t our capital, but it was the site of the official transfer from Russia, so the locals like to own the party scene.

The mountains near Ophir

Alaska Day should not be confused with the date that the U.S. purchased Alaska, which was earlier in the year of 1867 – March to be exact – and because Alaskan’s apparently like to celebrate, we recognize that date as Seward’s Day. The then-Secretary of the State, William H. Seward, was the forward thinking fellow who convinced his U.S. colleagues that buying Alaska was a great investment.

My ride taxis in to Takotna with the military radar dome just visible on the mountain ridge.

Hatcher Pass

The U.S paid .02 cents per acre for the territory and economically stressed Russia was happy to deposit $7.2 million bucks into their bank account.

Everything a Bush guy needs - I always laugh at Jack riding in the back.

Grimm and I wait to load into the airplane

Mosquitoes are a summer evil.

This is how we spent my birthday.

Of course, most U.S. citizens criticized their money being spent to buy land that was so far away and that had seemingly zero value. Who wanted a bunch of frozen land that was so far away? Poor Mr. Seward was berated and ridiculed and Alaska was dubbed such names as Seward’s Folly and Seward’s Icebox. However, the tough dude (seriously tough: he was brutally stabbed during President Lincoln’s assassination - and survived) knew what he was doing and not long after the Alaskan purchase, gold was discovered.

The Dalton highway and the Alaskan Oil Pipeline

Gold wasn’t the only thing to make the U.S. economy skyrocket: fur from animals, blubber from whales, coal, oil, and fishing industries soon became hot Alaskan harvested commodities, and Alaska became an important staging and defensive ground during WWII.

Lazy dock in Angoon

Fishing equipment in Grayling, along the Yukon river.

A day's catch

The rest is history, which we can delve into in later posts. Present day, I like to spend the day looking back at my photos and enjoy the blessed feeling of being lucky enough to live in this Last Frontier. It has provided me with ample adventures and opportunities to see and experience things that are pretty awesome.

Happy Em with Mt. McKinley in the background.

My parent's cozy home.

This is a day where Alaskan pass each other on the street and give each other knowing nods – nods of pride in our State and agreement that we are a pretty lucky bunch of frozen fools.

Fly in an iceberg

Sled dogs rest at a checkpoint during the Iditarod race.

Checkpoint Takotna during the Iditarod race.

My front yard.

Our wildlife is abundant, occasionally entertaining, and always magnificent.

Wolf

Bear

Viewing Dump Bear is a popular form of entertainment in Angoon - as one of my Kindergarten students demonstrates

Bald Eagle

Caribou herd

Now, sit back and scroll through some more Alaskan photos that make my heart happy (except for those pics of my life up on the Arctic Ocean that are stored on the missing hard drive, you and I will both have to wait to see those).